from the get-your-thoughts-in dept

It appears that the UK Parliament is asking for thoughts from the public on six key policy questions around intellectual property. You can be assured that the large lobbying organizations will make their voices heard, but it would be great if others in the UK, who have a more modern and nuanced view of what's happening around intellectual property issues, would make their voices heard as well:

1) What should the objective of IP policy be?

2) How well co-ordinated is the development of IP policy across government? Is IP policy functioning effectively on a cross-departmental basis? What changes to the machinery of government do you believe would deliver better IP policy outcomes?

3) There have been numerous attempts to update the IP framework in the light of changes brought about by the digital environment. How successful have these been and what lessons can be learnt from these for policy developments?

4) How effective is the Intellectual Property Office and what should its priorities be?

5) UK IP policy sits within European and supranational agreements. How should the UK government co-ordinate its policy at an international level and what should it do to promote IP abroad to encourage economic growth? Do you have examples of good and poor practice in this area?

6) Protecting, and enforcement of, the IP framework often sits in very different departments to those that develop IP policy and those that have responsibility for the industries most affected. What impact does this have and how can it be improved?

If you do decide to respond, obviously take time to carefully detail your position and back it up with facts and analysis, rather than any sort of emotional response. The details of how to respond to the request can be found in the official announcement (pdf) of this inquiry. It's worth noting that the group organizing this does appear to come at these questions from an already biased position -- in that the person collecting these responses works for "the Alliance Against IP Theft." So, you're already dealing with someone who falsely defines infringement as theft. That's all the more reason to be careful, thorough and detailed in any response.

from the justice-not-served dept

An anonymous Dallas Stars hockey fan alerts us to the quite worrisome news that the Justice Department seems to think it's a valuable use of their time to threaten blogs and community sites that they could be held liable if anyone in their comments posts a link to infringing material. You can see it in a "Welcome" post on the Defending Big D blog:

Streaming Links:

This is something I'll address in a separate post, but we can no longer allow links to be posted to online streams of the Dallas Stars games. While we have yet to be contacted, other SB Nation sites have been contacted by the Department of Justice. Because our site is 'allowing' these links to be posted, we can be held liable.

Now, this raises all sorts of questions. Why is the Justice Department threatening blogs like this? Was it really the Justice Department, or was it ICE (a part of Homeland Security)? What other sites have been contacted beyond SB Nation? What is the Justice Department saying to these sites and is it an accurate reflection of the law? And why don't SB Nation and other sites point out to the Justice Department that, under the DMCA safe harbors, there is a clear process for the removal of links to infringing content -- and it also provides safe harbors for the sites themselves?

My guess is that the Justice Department and ICE, via Operation In Our Sites, are trying to imply criminal copyright infringement here (otherwise, why else would the DOJ be involved?). But that's a much higher bar, and it's unlikely that a comment could be criminal copyright infringement. The link itself would have to be for profit, for starters. And while SB Nation or the site might make money, that's entirely separate from the action of the user. Either way, this is quite worrisome and seems like a massive step out of bounds by the Justice Department.

As the guy who submitted it wrote:

We fans want to watch our favorite hockey players play our favorite game. Since the NHL hasn't seemed to provide a convenient, reasonable means to watching games, "unauthorized" streaming exists. Why is the DOJ doing the NHL's dirty work? Some would argue that you can watch every NHL game on their streaming service, Center Ice. Wrong. You can't watch the team for the town you're in. You can watch everything BUT your local team. Since local teams are usually the teams that people want to watch, this renders Center Ice rather useless.

But that's the idea. They seem to think that if such things are useless due to government decree, then they can pretend that the world markets are not changing.